Announcing Metapad 3.6

Metapad 3.6 has: a new high resolution app icon, UI & usability updates, a new feature that remembers folders across sessions, better defaults for general settings, UTF-8 file support and the biggest new feature: portability mode.

What is ‘portability mode’?

Portability mode allows Metapad to properly run and save settings on an external or thumb drive and it will not leave any trace on a friend or family member’s system. This is also very useful when you are setting up an additional computer or migrating to a new one – copy over your Metapad directory and simply pick up where you left off.

A glimpse at metapad.ini

Technically portability mode means that all settings, window attributes, menu options, find/replace and recent file histories are stored and loaded in a local text file called metapad.ini (instead of the Windows Registry.) To enter this mode simply ensure that a file named metapad.ini exists where metapad.exe does – or use the one time command line option /m to migrate all your registry settings over.

Cool. So why wait almost 9 years till a new feature update?

About a year ago, after I released the Metapad source code, a fellow named David Millis sent me a code patch with a new feature he wrote for UTF-8 file support. This inspired me to get the code up and running again but I still wasn’t sure that I would get around to releasing a new version.

Then when Windows 7 came out at the end of 2009 and I played around with it I was a little irritated by how shoddy the Metapad icon looked in the task bar (due to the lower resolution scaling up poorly).

Windows 7 taskbar scales Metapad's icon poorly

That feeling inspired me to refresh the icon which was lots of fun. Once that was done I knew a release was forthcoming so I slowly added the other features in my meagre spare time through 2010.

Why is 3.6 twice the size of 3.5?

Thats entirely due to the updated icon. Metapad’s new icon is almost 100 KB which makes the compressed download about 100 KB instead of about 50 KB. But hey, we’re still talking about kilobytes, here – not megas or gigas.

Future proofing Metapad with a massive icon

How did you make the new icon?

I used a neat little app called Opacity for the bulk of the design. I then used the slick tool IcoFX to clean up the pixels on the various size and color palette variations.

Progression of Metapad icon with early 3.6 concept

Wait, isnt Opacity a Mac app?

Yes and 3.6 was mostly developed on a Mac using Parallels to run a virtual Windows 7 machine.

Weird. Will 3.5 language translations work in 3.6?

For the most part, yes although you won’t see the new UTF-8 menu item and some of the settings dialog usability improvements. You will also get a warning upon startup which you can disable via command line option /s (and you might want to stick that into a shortcut to avoid typing it each time at the command prompt.)

What was the hardest part for development?

First, getting Dev-C++ to generate a small binary or one that used the latest common control visual styles (I eventually gave up). Then getting Visual C++ to generate a binary that actually worked on Windows XP without an additional DLL.

What changes are in the beta releases?Beta 2 was posted on Feb 26, 2011:

57 Responses to “Announcing Metapad 3.6”

What a nice christmas surprise! Metapad is still on my system, although Notepad2 replaced it due to unicode and windows 7 integration support. But for text files with hyperlinks, I still use Metapad. Do you have ideas for further updates?

Excellent News!… I’ve been on Metapad since ages and it’s really hard to give it up. I use it for HTML and PHP code and I even bought a CS4 Web Premium and guess what?… Metapad is still my primary tool for web coding… I just moved to Windows 7 so, let’s see how it goes. Thanks!

It is the best news. It is still in use in all my computers. This amazing notepad’s replacement can’t be beaten by any other software. It has all needed features plus some more. Right click manu is so handy specialy with the “Make” command which can’t be found in any other program. Present notepad replacements are bloated with tons of functions needed mainly by coder and it is waste of time to try learn them.
Please now continue your marvelous work.
And thanx for your time. :)

I have a lrc file named Sigur Ros – Hoppípolla.lrc – cannot drag and drop the file into Metapad nor open it via the file open dialog. Doesn’t appear to support extended ASCII chars in filenames. Fix pls. :)

A huge THANK YOU ! ! ! I have used metapad for years – probably since soon after it was released – and use nothing else for a notepad replacement. The only thing I have wished all this time was that I could run it from a USB stick and keep all my settings. This is a fantastic improvement and I am go pleased to see you give metapad an update. Thanks again ! !

When I first came across metapad last year, I saw the site was still active but the program hadn’t been updated for years. I concluded that the program is obviously close to perfection and doesn’t require updating. I think it’s awesome that a near-perfect program has gotten even better, especially with portable mode. Thanks a lot!

I keep checking the Metapad Home Site but just found about this new update when visiting How-To Geek (www.howtogeek.com).
Great news and great Christmas present!
I´ve been using Metapad for ages and it´s a solid rock piece of software. Thank you!
Really liked this new portable mode.
Great job as always!

I would like to see a tiered approach.
1. A simple notepad replacement.
2. An add-on that will allow you to cut and paste in web content and pictures
3. An ultimate add-on that will allow programmers to use it with plugins for C, VBS etc.

You’re program has been at my side for the past 6 years I think.
I’ve kept thinking I’d try to extend its features (with things like encrypting/decrypting a piece of text, generating GUIDs, stuff I stumble upon while writing code). And I will. :-)

I have been using metapad at least 10 years, since well before 3.5, as my standard Notepad replacement. This new version was a nice surprise … and I do mean surprise! Saving the configurations in an .ini file rather than the Registry is a worthwhile new feature.

Those requesting tabs and other fancy add-ons: My take is that Alex’s intent has always been to minimize metapad’s size, subject to a functionality constraint. The willingness to incur the size burden of the new icon relents a bit on this, but processing power and RAM are orders of magnitude cheaper than when metapad was created. There are plenty of text editors out there which load multiple documents, code coloring, etc. (More power to the guy who codes PHP and HTML using metapad!) metapad’s feature set is hands-down superior to Notepad’s, while the program is still basically tiny (albeit larger than Notepad). I am very happy to keep things this way.

Nice! I just dropped into the site again to grab the link and found out a new version was out last December :) I’ve been using 3.51 for years, and installing it on other PCs too, so this is very good news. Thank you so much.

Hey i am using Metapad_3.51 since 2006 on my portable USB and it does a f*****g good job. With it’s hyperlink features you can make your portable Bookmark compilation and with the combination CTRL+F3 it is possible to jump from a Index Header to the specific location and you don’t have to previously mark the line because of the auto-marking function. This feels like a intern hyperlink and i love this function. This keeps your file very small and nevertheless very functional.
Metapad is small, portable, hyperfast, supereffective and must be in all likelihood a labor of an Ninja!

yay, finally some updates to my fave notepad replacement :) could you then please fix the case conversion bug. right now title case converts “metapad’s” into “Metapad’S” erroneously capitalizing the “s”.

one more thing that i’m having a problem with, which may even be intended behaviour or limitation, but if so, i don’t see a real purpose to it. find/replace text fields are limited to 100/101 chars (depending on the method used to enter the text), which sometimes is a real problem (long urls for example). especially so since metapad doesn’t alert you about dropping chars when you don’t actually type the text in either field, but as is more natural, you paste it, or just enter it by selecting it in metapad (this method cuts 1 more char than pasting). i’ve been burnt a few times, before i noticed this limit, since everything seems to work as expected, until you actually check what’s been done and notice the errors left by the replace operation. kudos again for a real nice app.

Hallo!
I suspect there is a minor bug in the METAPAD editor. Editor changes text appearance when some character occurs. Text appearance changes only one time in the editor window. It does not return back.
In more detail.
I live in Czech Republic. I mostly use windows codepage 1250. Text appearance in Metapad window changes when character “ě” or “ů” occurs (maybe some other character but I am not sure). I have seen the appearance change in Metapad ver. 3.5 and 3.5.1. I have not seen it in LE version. The same I saw just after ver. 3.6 beta installation.
To verify bug I can enclose two text samples.
After I met the bug I tried set else primary and secondary font. The bug disappeared after it. The bug did not come up when I set default fonts. I have installed Metapad on other PC. The bug comes up at default setting. I can send listings part of registers to compare changes.
Though the shortcoming I use Metapad for some years. It is an excellent replacement of Windows Notepad. Metapad properties are the proper I need. I recommend other people to use Metapad.

Please make the combinations of “UNIX text” (LF line ending sequence) with any of the supported Unicode encodings available too.

Another suggestion related to the Unicode encodings: A separate option to choose whether BOMs are used. In particular, the UTF-8 “BOM” is a UTF-16 concept misused to mark UTF-8 files. The ability to open and write UTF-8 encoded files without this mark would be useful.

It might also be useful to someone to have the option of CR line ending sequences (“Mac text”?) available.

Yes the UTF-8 feature is more of an “experimental” one and probably should be described better. Unfortunately I don’t “have” anyone to complete it but since this is an open source project I will happily accept source code contributions.

Hi,
I’m using metapad for almost …, well, I don’t remember :) It’s a great tool, thanks.
Metapad LE is very slow when opening ~400K text files on win7 x64. No problem with non-LE metapad.
Greetings from Turkey.

Oh, this is COOL! I’ve been using Metapad since before 3.5 (can’t remember version), and I’ve been a staunch supporter of it all along to my friends. Came to the site to DL it for mygirlfriend’s PC and happily found the update. Thanks for the GREAT program.
Kudos from Italy.

I’ve been using metapad as my notepad replacement (i.e. all time text editor) since long time (before y2K). I really like its ‘Favourites’ feature, quite useful for instant retrieval of frequently used text files.

I also quite appreciate the new seamless features, among others are below two:
* Its portability by having the local .ini and its ability to migrate settings from the registry in a time-saving “/m” command line

* support for other file formats beyond DOS

Of course there are some other new cool ones…but it’s great that metapad remains lean, not having too many features otherwise it’ll be bloated (something resembles the heavy bulky gun, UE :)) Metapad is still less than 200k!

I fell in love with metapad at first use! :) Been recommending metapad to all my friends ever since.

I just started working at a new company and was given a win7 laptop. I was wondering if the instructions to change win7 blue notepad icon to metapad’s icon using the registry tweak is correct.. I noticed there’s a “” on the hex values. Is that intentional ?

I haven’t tried importing the registry values yet. Have anyone with win7 tried it? Does it work without errors?